Erik is a baseball fan who has been attending baseball games and snagging baseballs regularly since 2008.

8-16-11 PNC Park

On Monday, the ballhawks of PNC Park got groundscrewed. That’s right. It was perfect weather for batting practice, but due to a short and light shower at 4PM, the groundscrew decided to cancel batting practice so that they could essentially have a three hour break before they really had to do anything.

This was the seen from the bridge as Nick and I watched and waited, but never saw a cage.
So on Tuesday, I was hoping to get off to a good start on the longest homestand of the year. Since Pedro Alvarez was sent down today, there weren’t any balls that left the stadium out onto the riverwalk.

When I did enter, I managed to catch a Michael McKenry home run on the fly here.
Moments later, at 5:03, the Pirates were done with batting practice and running off the field.

When the Cardinals came out, I was able to glove trick a ball that had rolled out of view just inside the bullpen door.
At 5:30, I ran into foul territory where I had kept tabs on a foul ball that was hit into the upper seating area above the cross aisle. I was clearly able to see it from the upper bleachers, making it an easy run and grab mission.

While over there, I decided to look around a little more and found ball #4 behind the Pirates dugout
and ball #5 nearby.

I didn’t get anything else until the end of batting practice, but noticed a toss up as the Cardinals ran off the field hit the right field seats and settle on the warning track in center field. Zac Weiss was perched above another ball on the warning track, and held the spot so I could glove trick that one as well.

I glove tricked the first ball on one attempt by Zac, the second one took much longer. The lacing in my glove is slowly falling apart, and its causing the glove trick to be much less effective. After about five minutes of trying, I finally reeled it in for ball #7, and gave it away to a group of kids. (I made them answer a trivia question to get the ball, since all four of them wanted it. One boy knew the answer to ‘Who wears #53 for the Pirates?’)

After that I left to go home and see Amy and Olivia, watch the movie the Source Code on Blu Ray, and walk to the local ice cream joint to have some ice cream. A great night!

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